FiNeRaIn Ian Royal I could equal that number of detractors with positive neutrals I've met and know on my own.
People that could simply be behaving nicely to your face, rather than giving you the honest truth?
Being called a moron from you holds no water, id place my views similar to most lifelong football fans.
Reading fans are pushover's when it comes to authorities and they are arrogant cretins to away fans. I've lost count of how many times reading fans sing songs at the opposition rather than support their own side, it doesn't work when you are shit, yet the east stand are still intent on winding them up. Banter is banter, acting like class-less idiots is another.
Its no surprise people are delighted we have been relegated.
Every set of supporters in the country gives the away fans stick. There's nothing special either way about Reading fans. I remember years ago, on rivals.net, when Walsall beat us, the board lit up like a christmas tree and it would be easy to have thought "why does everyone hate us?"
The following year, after promotion, there were loads of fans on there wishing us well.
The fact is, when things are bad then all the bitter little gimps with an axe to grind will come out of the woodwork to take the piss. It'll almost always be fans of clubs we've pissed off in some way, usually on the pitch, and has very little to to with how our fans are perceived.
I'm there was a survey done a while ago, possibly in WSC, asking for fans' opinions of clubs, essentially whether you feel positive, negative, or nothing towards the club, and IIRC, we came out as one of the more popular clubs in the country in that respect.
We aren't hated, except perhaps by sections of our own fans who've developed an advanced state of self-loathing of everything we do, becaused they've developed an image in their head of what fans are apparently like everywhere else that's completely divorced from reality.
Every time one of those "our fans are crap" threads surfaces there'll be people moaning about rumblestix as an example of what our fans our like, despite the fact they were binned after that one match and never seen again - unlike many other clubs. Just imagine if we'd adopted those folded card things that you hit to make a noise - such as were given out at Arsenal and are regularly seen elsewhere.
the problem with our fans is that we need a kick up the arse to get stirred into voice, but beyond that we're fine.
If people you know have expressed delight in Reading getting relegated, then I'd suggest that maybe the problem is you, not the club, in that you've pissed them off, and they are taking delight in
your misery.